This article is a contribution to the occasional series dealing with a major book that has influenced the author. Previous contributors include Stewart Macaulay, John Griffith, William Twining, Carol Harlow, Geoffrey Bindman, Harry Arthurs, André‐Jean Arnaud, Alan Hunt, Michael Adler, Lawrence O. Gostin, John P. Heinz, Roger Brownsword, Roger Cotterrell, Nicola Lacey, Carol J. Greenhouse, and David Garland.An initial twist: several acute observers would consider the way I read to be the most influential effect of reading on me – a way of reading that extends beyond the specificity of the text yet, in so doing, connects integrally with it. Salvation of specificity is at hand, however. That way of reading is intimately reflective of Derridean deconstruction and a hugely influential reading becomes his ‘Force of Law’. A problem ensues. Other influential reading came before my love of Derrida – influential reading to do with law and society (of course), with decolonization and imperialism, with engaged anthropology, and with critical legal studies. A retrospective revelation then follows. Derridean deconstruction is found to haunt and inform these other readings. They can be read in a way that inherently anticipates deconstruction. Some culminating coherence is offered by the inescapable insistence of community and the mutually intrinsic fusion of community and law.

The terms “economic” and “irregular” migrant support a particular construction of the subject of labor law, whereby the exclusion of some from a formal employment relationship renders them necessary precarious laborers. The experience of precarious work is not an experience limited to migrant workers. However, the relationship between labor regulation and the most precarious of workers is one that has been gaining critical attention. Building on existing studies of migration, precarity and labor, I question the boundaries and frame of labor law with regard to precarious workers through Jean-Luc Nancy’s confronted community. Re-thinking the legal citizen-subject of labor law is necessary before remedies to address the exploitation of workers in precarious situations can be successful.

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